Rent

Because he knew how much I loved the live production, John took me to see Rent. When I saw the musical live, I was in London and it was three years after the initial Broadway release. I found the stage version to be so powerful and moving that I listened to the soundtrack almost nonstop for the next couple months in order to relive it. I was excited to see the movie thinking that with most of the original Broadway cast, the movie would have to be good. For the most part, the movie held to the play, but some of the power was lost in transferring the production from the stage to the screen. Perhaps the power was lost in the increased dialogue. I am not sure why the director felt the need to have the actors talk some of the words that were sung on stage. I suspect it might be to make the transition into song seem more natural, but, let's face it, musicals are not natural. People don't go around singing and dancing in the streets anywhere else but in a musical, and the effectiveness of the art form is lost when the songs are shortened. Beyond the increased talking, some of the scenes looked a little different in the movie than in the play. Admittedly, I saw the stage production over 7 years ago, so it is certainly possible that some of the details have slipped my mind in that time. Or, it is also possible that scenes were adjusted in order to make the story more relevant to life today. Even though the musical may seem to be modern, the fact is that it's somewhat outdated from a medical perspective. For a graduate school project a couple years back, I interviewed an HIV-positive pastor. He had been living with the disease for over ten years, and with the great medicine out there today, he told me that the disease wasn't even detectable in his blood anymore. While this man may not be as impoverished as the bohemian artists of Rent, as a pastor of a tiny (20 people max) independent congregation, he's certainly not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. Untreated, people may die of AIDS as quickly as in the time of Rent, but most of the characters in the story were being medically treated, as is evinced from their "AZT break" comments. So medicine has changed, GLBT rights and presence in our country have changed, and stories that used to be culturally relevant have become passe as culture has changed. While at its heart, I am sure Rent is still moving when performed live, I walked away from the movie theater less moved than I was when I walked away from the play house in the summer of 1998. I cannot be sure how I would have reacted to the movie if I had not first seen the play, but because of my emotional experience with the play before, I can only give the movie 3 out of 5 stars.